By Warren D. Smith.
The right or wrong choice of voting methods may literally save or doom everything. Seattle: lead democracy out of the 1700s with proposition 1A.
Washington's current "top-2 primaries" let you vote for anyone regardless of party; the top 2 enter the general. Seattle's Nov.8 ballot offers two 2-winner voting method options for future primaries: (A) approval or (B) instant runoff voting. Even those choosing "name one candidate then shut up" (status quo) voting can still select A versus B.
Approval Voting's only change is allowing voters to "approve" any set of choices, without obligation to name only one. The most-approved one (for Seattle, two) win. Avoiding discarding "overvotes" actually simplifies voting, plus inhibits fraud. Approval vastly increases voter expressivity: now cast any of 2046 approval-patterns, not just 11, with 11 candidates. Voting is communicating desires, so the old system forcing voters to provide the least information possible, is maximally stupid. Approve-both to avoid two good candidates "splitting the vote," thereby enthroning a scoundrel. You're no longer forced to lie-vote for your "lesser evil" rather than true favorite, from fear picking a "spoiler" would make both her and your second choice lose. Surveys showed 91% of voters with favorite Nader in 2000, lie-voted; Nader actually majority-defeated Bush with honest votes! 90% dishonesty isn't democracy – nearer the opposite. This "favorite betrayal" voter-behavior explains why only 0.02% of the last 80 years' Federal seats were third party – despite 2021 Gallup poll findings 62% believe "the Republican and Democratic parties... do such a poor job that a third party is needed." (33%: "they do an adequate job of representing the American people," 5%: "don't know.")
Simpler. Fewer voter errors. Fewer ballots discarded. Communicates more (and more honest) information about voter desires. Ends vote-splitting and spoilers. Better winners. Less anti-third-party bias: more choices for you, goodbye intellectually sterile polarized-robot legislatures.
Instant Runoff Voting (option B) votes are rank-orderings.
IRV eliminates the candidate top-ranked least often, reducing a C-candidate election to
IRV's more complicated. More voter errors & discarded ballots (7× more in San Francisco 2004). More ways to tie. Still hugely anti-third-party: In 2006, third-parties held only one of Australia's 564 federal & state IRV seats. Unpopular: in all three nationwide polls (1974, 1984, and 2010) on this, Australia wanted "abolish IRV" by 15%, 15%, and 20% margins. Compare Latvia, with approval-elected parliament since 1995 – no "abolish AV" polls there. (Ditto Greece 1864-1926.)
Sorry suckers – IRV still has spoilers. Sarah Palin was it in Alaska's first statewide IRV election, won in August by Mary Peltola: The voters ranking "Palin>Begich>Peltola" made both Palin & Begich lose; but if they'd un-voted Palin, they'd have elected their "lesser evil" Begich. That election also featured IRV's horrific "non-monotonicity" paradox: 6000 Palin voters changing their vote to Peltola would've made Peltola lose. That's not a misprint – IRV often self-contradicts. Another: IRV can elect as "best," the same pair IRV considers "worst" (i.e. elects with reversed rank-orderings)!
Seattle's 2-winner IRV differs from Utah's "1+1" kind: Utah elects winner#1, erases him from all rankings, then re-runs single-winner IRV to elect winner#2. That matters because in 13 such Utah bi-elections 2019-2022, the Seattle and Utah rules' second winners disagreed 8 times. That "1+1≠2" contradiction proves something's wrong with either 2- or 1-winner IRV (or both) 8/13 of the time.
Those self-contradictions never happen with Approval. With approval 1+1=2; the most-approved isn't the least-; honestly approving favorites never hurts you; and switching your vote from X to Y never hurts Y.
IRV artificially favors extremists; approval doesn't.
San Francisco was the first modern US city to adopt IRV, 55-45% in a 2002 referendum. Their 1-sentence referendum wording "Shall the City use Instant run-off voting to elect City officers with a majority of votes" lied: SF then elected non-majority IRV-winners. (Peltola also won by non-majority, indeed more IRV voters ranked Begich above Peltola than below.) 2011-2012 polls showed SF wants to repeal IRV by 55-36%.
Seattle's official wording never mentions "instant" or "runoff"(!), instead calling it "ranked choice." That's another deception – there actually are hundreds of ranked-choice methods, e.g. Borda, Condorcet, Coombs-elimination, and Nauru island's method. (It's as though Seattle redefined "human" to mean "white male.")
Peter Fishburn (1936-2021; coauthor of Approval Voting), was one of our best democracy-scientists. His 1976-7 papers first computer-simulated primary+general systems, finding 1A performs best among numerous alternative proposals. 1976? Long time passing. The USA's failure to adopt AV and 1A frustrated Fishburn until Fargo enacted 1-winner approval by 64%, then St.Louis enacted 1A by 68% in 2020.
Seattle: go bigger.
About author: Smith (math PhD) is top author of the RangeVoting.org science-based voting reform website.